Thursday, August 13, 2009

You did this:When you finally break out of your Facebook trance long enough to glance up at the time displayed in the top right corner of your MacBook, you will notice that it is 4:52 PM, a startling eight minutes before your in-laws are due to arrive. You will run, frenzied, through the house and “clean up” by jamming all visible stray objects into two Hefty Steel Sacks, one for dirty dishes, one for everything else. You will not have time to take the bags to the garage so you will hide them by shoving the bags into the mostly empty dryer. As the car pulls into the driveway you will adjust your awkward ponytail and pat yourself on the back for leaving enough time to put on a bra under your pajama top.

Do not do this:The next morning, in a haze of too little caffeine and too many Wiggles singing, “Miss Polly Had a Dolly,” you remember that the shirt you would like to wear today was part of yesterday’s laundry. Because it is still sitting in the dryer, you turn the dryer on to spin out the inevitable wrinkles. It takes you just one slow motion, fraction of an instant to register the miserable crashing sound coming from inside the dryer as the discordant swan song of three juice glasses, one Pyrex lid, one bucket arm of a Tonka remote control front loader, two cereal bowls, and one Fisher Price Laugh & Learn Learning Phone.